15. Side Trip East on S Washington Street

A short walk east on S Washington leads you to the site of Seattle's original Chinatown. Note the ornate upper balcony of the building on the northeast corner of Washington and the 2nd Avenue Extension. This once housed a family association, or tong, and the Wah Chong Company, which supplied Chinese immigrant labor for early railroad and city construction projects. An economic downturn in the mid-1880s fueled white resentment of Chinese workers, and most of Seattle's 300 Chinese residents were forced to leave Seattle at gunpoint in February 1886.

Seattle's first Catholic church, Our Lady of Good Hope, once stood a little farther east, on the corner of 3rd Avenue S and S Washington Street. The neighboring Washington Court Building (1890) once housed Madam Lou Graham's whorehouse, giving visitors the choice between "piety and prostitution on the same corner," as one pioneer quipped.

Courtesy MOHAI

Courtesy Paul Dorpat

Courtesy Paul Dorpat